Background
William Emerson was born in Concord, Massachusetts, son of Rev. William and Phebe (Bliss) Emerson.
His father, minister of the Concord church, was a zealous patriot and was present at the fight at Concord.
William Emerson was born in Concord, Massachusetts, son of Rev. William and Phebe (Bliss) Emerson.
His father, minister of the Concord church, was a zealous patriot and was present at the fight at Concord.
The son, thrown early on his own resources by the death of his father and the remarriage of his mother, prepared for college at Concord, was graduated from Harvard in 1789, taught school for two years, and after a brief study of divinity at Cambridge was ordained minister of the Unitarian church at Harvard, Massachusetts.
He was already attracting attention as a preacher and in 1799 accepted a call to the First Church of Boston, being chosen as one especially fitted to resist the alarming attacks on our holy religion, by the Learned, the Witty, and the Wicked. ” When he died, at the age of forty-two, he had left a distinct mark on the literary, charitable, and educational life of Boston.
His views were liberal. Indeed he at one time cherished the hope of planting a church in Washington on strictly congregational principles, with no confession of faith, the communion to be administered freely to all who wished to receive it. In Boston he mingled so much in society as to draw a rebuke from his sister, Mary Moody Emerson fq. F. ] , for his “tributes to fashion and parade” and for finding “the present world” too real.
To eke out his meager salary he taught school and did manual labor on his farm, while his wife kept boarders. “We are poor and cold, ’’ he wrote, “and have little meal, and little wood, and little meat, but, thank God, courage enough. ”
Quotations: “We are poor and cold, ’’ he wrote, “and have little meal, and little wood, and little meat, but, thank God, courage enough. ”
He was chaplain of the state Senate, Overseer of Harvard College, active member of the Massachusetts Historical Society, editor of the Monthly Anthology, and founder of the Anthology Club from whose collection of books grew the Boston Athenaeum Library.
William Emerson was a man of striking personal appearance, tall, handsome, of fair complexion, with courtly manners and a particularly pleasing voice. He commanded in the pulpit a fluent but slightly formal eloquence, the unimpassioned correctness of which was characteristic of an already dying culture.
On October 25, 1796, he married Ruth Haskins of Boston.
